This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 522 Problematizing Ignatius of Antioch's Middle Recension with Nathan Massie This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. Sean Finnegan: Hey there I'm Sean Finnegan and you are listening to the Restitutio podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. Ignatius of Antioch lived in the first generation of Christians after the apostles died during the late 1st and early 2nd century. Modern day apologists regularly point to Ignatius letters to prove the antiquity of the deity of Christ and 1 Bishop Church governance, but. Did you know that Ignatius letters have survived in three different versions or recension? Although most scholars and textbook recognize the middle recession as authentic, Ignatius rejecting the shorter and longer versions. My guest today says otherwise. He argues that the shorter recension is the most authentic. My guest is Nathan Massey. He was a student of mine years ago at the Atlanta. Bible College, where he earned a bachelors in theology. Now he's in full-time ministry, serving as the associate pastor of the Oregon Church of God in Illinois. He's looking to go back to school to earn his Masters degree in New Testament exegesis. Actually, he's already gotten into a program last year, but couldn't go due to a lack of funding. Now I've encouraged him to set up a go fund me account for this, and I'm happy to report that over a dozen people have already contributed to help him. However, he's got a. Long way to go to hit. His target would you consider? Giving to help Pastor Nathan. The bottom line is that he won't be able to go unless people who believe in him step up and donate. I've donated myself and Restitutio has donated as well, but he still needs more listen to this episode and see if you believe in this young man. See if you agree with me, he should have a shot at studying. At a graduate level. Now, so many of you have reached out to me over the years, complimenting me on my knowledge, writing competence, or speaking abilities. I can tell you that to a large degree, I became who I am because of my time in grad school. Why not help another go to as a movement of restoration as we need as many credentialed scholars as we can get. Please help him if you can. I've got the go fund me link in the show notes for this episode. OK, now back to the show here. Now is episode 522 problematizing Ignatius of Antioch Middle recension with Pastor Nathan Massey. Hello, welcome to restitutio. I'm Sean Finnegan and today with me is Nathan Massey, an associate pastor for the Oregon Church of God in Oregon, Illinois. He holds a bachelor degree from the Atlanta Bible College and has served as an adult Sunday school teacher, a worship leader, youth pastor in the church where he grew up. And also he is now the associate pastor. Nathan met his wife Sarah while pastoring in Oregon, and they continue to serve their community as well as support national efforts. And recently he gave a presentation at the Unitarian Christian Alliance on Ignatius, and that's what we are speaking about today. Welcome to Restitutio, Nathan Massey. Nathan Massie: Thank you, Sean. It's a pleasure to be here. Sean Finnegan: So why don't we begin by asking the question? Why should anyone care about Ignatius of Antioch? Most people probably haven't even heard of the guy. Why does he matter? Nathan Massie: He matters for two primary reasons. One, because he is in early church history, source. In other words, he is early in the 2nd century and so coming so close to the Apostolic Age, what he would have to say could have been derived from the apostles or could not have been but be. In such an early. Christian writer, he's much nearer to the original source than we are today, and the second reason that he's important is he's cited by many Christians, specifically Trinitarians, as having an early high Christology. Showing possible leanings towards the Trinity in a much earlier anti Asian way. Sean Finnegan: If I had a nickel for every time somebody quoted Ignatius of Antioch to. Prove the deity of Christ. I'd probably have a dollar. No, I'm. Just kidding, not much I have. But you know. It's very common. You mentioned your own experience reading James Whitey's the Forgotten Trinity book. And he used Ignatius in there. Of course. Matt Slick and other Internet apologists basically jumped right to Ignatius the moment anyone questions that the Trinity was fully understood, articulated, believe, et cetera. Before the 4th century boom, the answer is. Ignatius Senior Ignatius of Antioch. So he definitely comes up a lot. And he has. Been a battleground for a long time. So maybe we could just begin by asking. What are the issues with Ignatius? You know, there are there's different collections that we call recensions. Could you describe that a little bit? Nathan Massie: Sure. Yeah. And the entire Ignatian corpus, there are 17 letters. Not all are written by Ignatius. Three are attributed to being written to him, but they're included in the corpus. And there are three different lengths, two different letter collections, known as recensions. There's a short version which contains 3 letters, middle recension, which contain. Means 7 to 10 to depend on who you ask, and then you have the full corpus and the longest reception. So there's a lot of material to work through when you're working with Ignatius. And not only that, but the different letter collections also come in different languages too. There are a total of 6 different languages that you can find Ignatius writings in. Syriac, Greek, Latin, Armenian, Coptic and Arabic. So there is a lot of material concerning. Gracius, when Ignatius first began to become published the first time, he was really becoming well known, was in 1495. He had three what are now known as medieval forgeries that were printed in Latin 2 letters to the apostle John and one letter from the mother of the Lord Jesus. Everybody pretty much agrees that those are. Forgeries and so. Sean Finnegan: And those are the ones that surface first. Nathan Massie: Yes. Yeah, they were the first ones. Yeah, they they came out first and then after the next few decades, more and more letters by Ignatius began to become published, and he became a wider known name. But during that time, people were just kind of taking the Ignatian letters at face value. They weren't really trying to go through the material and determine what's authentic. Or what's not authentic? They were just reading it at face value. Sean Finnegan: Yeah, let's take an example. His epistle to the Ephesians, right. So this is an epistle ostensibly written to the believers in Ephesus and in the short recension, the Epistle to the Ephesians is shorter than in the middle recession. That epistle itself is shorter. Right. Nathan Massie: Yeah, yeah. Over 1000 words shorter. Sean Finnegan: And then the longer recession will have it be long. So this is a little confusing because there's really. Nathan Massie: Two things going. Sean Finnegan: On one is the collection itself has more letters from shorter to middle to longer, 3 to 7 to 17. But then even when you're looking at the same letter between different receptions, that letter itself is shorter or longer, so that could be a little confusing. What does all this mean? You know? Like, what does it indicate? The fact that there are all these different recessions? We don't have this for other authors really so. What's going on? Nathan Massie: Well, there are two mainstream theories. One thing we know for sure is as time had gone on from the 2nd century, there were definitely letters that got longer. Most scholars agree at this point that the longest reception of the texts. Were actually created by the Aryans in the during the kind of the Trinitarian Arian controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries. When it comes to the shortest recension, there are two theories. The current scholastic consensus, and it has been for 140 years, is that the middle recension and the seven letter collection was redacted down to the shortest recension for monastic purposes. That's pretty much all the explanation that the scholar JB Lightfoot gives, which he's the one that essentially establishes the seven letter collection as the as the authentic Ignatius. But yeah, he just kind of says it's reduced from agnostic purposes, which doesn't. It's not really clear to me what that means. Sean Finnegan: Yeah, I was just gonna ask, like, what in the world is a monastic purpose like, hey, we're, you know, we already have so much other stuff to do, so make a shorter version for us. Like, I've never heard of monks as being short winded or lacking in time. Literally spend all day reciting scripture and praying and copying manuscripts. Nathan Massie: Yeah, generally, you know, looking at the ancient monastic order, occasionally a line might be sketch or a page might be copied a second time, but you don't see monks taking thousands and thousands of words out of a larger text and reducing it to a redacted version. Yes, the seconds and the earlier theory was produced by name William Cureton in the 1850s, and his thought was that the shortest version of the text was actually expanded into the middle recension. Which makes sense because as texts grow in age and get into different hands. Some interpolations or some additions are later added to the text. And to me, that's a little bit more persuasive than just having the text being shortened for, quote, UN quote monastic purposes. Sean Finnegan: Some others mentioned ignatius's letters later, so you have ear and assess origin. You see bias. I think you CBS mentions all seven of his letters. He just kind of. Rattles through a lie. That are also found in the middle of recession. What's your take on that? Nathan Massie: Lightfoot. He quotes Eusebius as authoritatively stating that this is the authentic collection of Ignatius and the problem with that is that Eusebius is about 200 plus years after the time of Ignatius. That's plenty of time for issues to occur in the text. So you Sibelius is a decent external witness, but the. Julius external witnesses such as Polycarp and Irenaeus, when they equate Ignatius and their homilies, they are quoting quotes that can be found either in the three letter collection or the seven letter collection. So the earliest possible quotations of Ignatius are. Quotations that could be found in the smaller collection, which in my opinion gives stronger proof and evidence that the shorter collection is first. Sean Finnegan: OK, how did Lightfoot decide on this? The seven letters? Because to let the audience know. You know, this JB Lightfoot conclusion that the seven letters of the Middle Recession are the pure, untarnished, uncorrupted, perfectly preserved. Authentic writings of this powerhouse Christian author from the early 2nd century. OK, so that conclusion has held sway. Since you wrote it right and it still holds way today and and what what year is he? Is he like in the early 1900s or 1800s? Nathan Massie: Late 1800s, yeah. Sean Finnegan: 1800 So this is over a century. Everyone is sort of bowing to Lightfoot's conclusion. How did he decide on those 7 letters? Let's talk about Lightfoot because. You get into. Him a little bit and your your paper. Nathan Massie: Sure. Well, I think it's important to state first that Lightfoot was actually persuaded by keratins position 1st, that the shortest letter collection was first and then expanded into the seven letter cola. And in fact, it wasn't till after curation died that JB Lightfoot began to change his mind. Part of the reason that Lightfoot changed his mind was began working with a man named Theodore Zahn, and as they were studying the ignition collections altogether, they realized that hey, the seven letter collection. Is it really that different? After all, it could be authentic and so they just kind of held with that theory and ran with it, and then eventually defended it. 800 page two volume book JB Lightfoots on Ignatius of Antioch and so he said. The writings are too similar that I can't discredit them from being added to. They must have been reduced from the original 7 letters. That's kind of the position that he. Comes from and then he states Eusebius being a very honest and trustworthy, you know 4th century choice when it comes to. Him stating that the seven letter collection was authentic. That was kind of the groundwork for. Lightfoot. But there. Were also a. Lot of issues that kind of swim around this time. There's some man by the name of Bauer. A German scholar, he was a critical scholar and he was writing on Ignatius. Saying that this is clearly end of the 2nd century stuff, you can't quote him as the earliest sub Apostolic kind of Christian tradition, as much later when he begins to say these things, his conclusions are this first that the New Testament is no longer reliable. In other words, scholars of yesteryear were often cite Ignatius and Ignatius's quotations from the New Testament to put those firmly in the 1st century. But if you have. Speaker OK. Nathan Massie: A later 2nd century writer. You can't assume that the that New Testament collection comes from the 1st century. The second issue with having Ignatius being a later source is that it disrupts what's known as the bishopric priority. Or in other words, the the three-part hierarchical structure of the church. Bishop, Elder and Deacon. Sean Finnegan: Let me pause you there cause I did want to talk about. Ferdinand Christian Bauer's a little bit more. He's a well known Jesus scholar. This guy's basically. I think what a lot of. Us would call an. Anti Christian you. Know he's he's criticizing. Maybe that's too strong, but he's criticizing the New Testament. He's criticizing Christian practice. Lightfoot is more or less what we. Might call an apologist. He's defending Christianity, defending the New Testament. And he sees with Ignatius he can authenticate Ignatius. Then he can show. OK, well, this form of Christianity that we also see in the New Testament was was standard in the early 2nd century. It would just kind of like serve as a wall to hold back the ocean of criticism. To advance any further into the 2nd century as far as dating the New Testament to be later and later, which was sort of like the strategy or the tendency among critical scholars in the. Period. So Lightfoot, he has external motivations beyond, like just figuring out. Which is correct? The shorter middle or longer or none of them? It's entirely possible that all three are corrupted and that we have to use some redaction criticism to recover what we can from all the corrupted letters. What was historical, it, which is entirely possible as well. Talk to me About the Bishop side of this because. You know, there's a criticism there and a concern there as well. Nathan Massie: Yeah. Well, JB Lightfoot was the Bishop of Durham during these times. During the height of his ignition scholarship. And so being in the third highest position in the Anglican Church, you would want to defend your own status and position the bishopric priority or the three-part hierarchical structure of the church, Bishop, Elder and. You can are actually mentioned in Ignatius. It's mentioned in the shorter reception, but it is used in a similar way to the apostle Paul uses it kind of interchangeable leaders in the church and in the seven letter collection it is really expanded upon that it is the Bishop that is over all and. So you need to respect him. In fact, he goes to as far as saying in the middle reception do not marry unless you have the consent of your Bishop to dissent from your Bishop is to dissent from God. And so there are these really strong. Phrases that are used in the seven letter collection that don't exist in the three letter collection, and so not only was Lightfoot defending the New Testament, he was defending the legitimacy of the office that he held in the Anglican Church. Sean Finnegan: And so would these. Both be reasons that you question Lightfoots. Nathan Massie: Ohh yes, not. Only because of that, but also he has some faulty points in his getting to the seven letter collection, especially we've already referred to like the monastic reduction theory. But one of my biggest issues with Lightfoot and this is what I kind of call the smoking gun of the situation. Is that when he produces his translation of the seven letter collection, he does not use these 7 letters in the Greek middle recension only he also pulls from the longest receptions of both Latin and Greek to inform his seven letter collection text. And it says doctor given states. And his dissertation on Ignatius of Antioch that's calling this a faithful 2nd century tax is simply not the case. It is a 19th century. 3 chimeric reconstruction. So there are really big problems with that. We know that New Testament scholars will use different manuscripts, but using the longest possible manuscripts and ones that are definitely not the earliest. That would be very questionable and New Testament scholarship. And I think that that stands true. Sean Finnegan: So perhaps Lightfoot violated some of the principles of textual criticism in generating the mental recession. And so therefore, the whole question needs to be reopened. Seems to be what you're saying. The way it is right now, like I don't know if you read the Michael Holmes. Intro in the. Apostolic Fathers, you know. He's he's and Michael Holmes is a bit of an apologist himself. Let me just say, but it's like nobody can dare question Lightfoot. Everyone who's tried has fallen short and has been laughed to scoring and. If you dare. Question light foot. You know, you might. As well, just kiss your scholarly career goodbye. That's kind of the impression I get from homes, but that doesn't seem to intimidate you, huh? Nathan Massie: No, it doesn't, because there are other good scholars that are now beginning to question the scholarly consensus on Lightfoots positioned. There are new techniques that are being utilized to get really deep into the text, to look at things such as like word usage, it would be the same type of treatment that we would give to the book of Hebrews to validate that it was not written by the apostle. I don't want to say Lightfoot was a bad scholar by any means. He was paramount in a in a lot of historiographical study. But when it comes to Ignatius, he has a lot of skin in the game, but also when it comes to textual criticism, he just hears people like Bauer from the two being in school of thought. With this really high critical scholarship. And I just see him backing away from critical scholarship. Because I I think in some way or another, he associates critical scholarship with criticizing the New Testament or criticizing his own position in the church because the German scholars were coming at it so strongly. Sean Finnegan: OK, so let's say. We're willing to consider for a moment that Lightfoot. Who would have gotten this wrong? What would we do? Next, to verify that you know the shorter recession is in fact a valid possibility. Nathan Massie: Comparing it to the other texts that are available helps seeing what was taking out or what was possibly later added in and not to get ahead of myself, but I think that there are some issues with the. Shortest retention as. Well, I just think that there are few. Were than the seven letter collection but keratin when he was writing concerning the three letter collection, which he was actually the one that discovered it, sending people from the British Museum over to Egypt to curate these documents. When he began to work on the the three letter collection, he actually. Had such a high view of Ignatius saying that. The words of Ignatius are only seconds to that of the apostles. He had an extremely high view of Ignatius and the other thing about keratin. That's important. To pull out. Is that he was chaplain ordinary to Queen Victoria and he was also retired. Priests himself. So he did not see any reason to defend his Anglicanism through the scope of the anxious, quite like JB Lightfoot did, and so Puritan views these texts in such an extremely high way. I think it's kind of interesting for us to look at early Christianity and to see its development. But to actually pull any type of usable doctrine or anything like that out of the three. Collection I I don't think it would have any use like that, but for historiographical reasons it would be very important. Sean Finnegan: Yeah. So let's. Talk a little bit about the scholar that you leaned on a little bit called Marcus Vincent. How did he conceive of it? What was his whole angle of approach? And he and he wrote in 2019. So he's a very recent scholar, as opposed to some of these from the. 1800s, we were just talking. Nathan Massie: Yeah, a lot less these than vowels. When it comes to Vincent, he actually looks at a larger scope than just Ignatius. His 2019 book actually encompasses a lot of historiographical writings, but he does focus on Ignatius, which is why I picked up the texts because it was in my scope of research. But he takes a few different approaches. Than other critical scholars have done in the past. For example, he examines word usage, and these are not just simple words. These are actually he. He starts by examining function words like conjunctions or pronouns, prepositions, and he just compares them between the documents and the reason for doing this. Is to see if somebody was trying to mimic the writings of Ignatius, or if it truly was a redaction. That is the true purpose of this, and when you look at the statistics, they're pretty startling. For example, the Greek word Allah, which is a conjunction is used 58 times in the middle reception, but only twice in the short reception. So what you would have to do with this data is either, say, was there a monastic redactor that decided to take out 56 times. The word Allah is used or. Or is it more plausible that a later writer was trying to mimic the writings of Ignatius, but was unable to hide his own preference of function words, and he goes through a lot of different words to show the different usages. But apart from function words, he also uses other words and that he actually only goes through the letter alpha. Now what's important is that the shortest reception of the text is in Syriac, and So what he did was he would do a simple translation and find a common word between Greek and Syriac to be able to make the comparison when he begins his research on the word Allah, one of the most important words in the Christian faith shows up, and that's the word. Anastasis, which means resurrection. It shows up 14 times in the middle recension, but it doesn't. Show up at all. In the shortest reception, so again, we are posed with a question. What's more likely that a Christian monk removed every reference of the word resurrection from the Ignatius text when he was doing the redaction? Or? Was it simply a later author who was more Privy to using theological terms that simply added it to the text? Sean Finnegan: Yeah, it's certainly a strange concept. To think with right, you're just like. Comparing how? Basic words occur between 2 collections of texts. And the shorter and the middle. They have a lot of overlap, right? The middle, more or less includes all of the shorter, but then it has also a lot more as well. Yeah. How how do you like account for the fact that like, well, of course, there's more instances of the word Allah in the middle because it's just a much bigger collection of. Nathan Massie: Yeah, well, Vincent's actual conclusion is that these terms can't be accounted for solely by the fact that the middle reception is longer. For example, instead of using Allah, he could have used a different conjunction like day for example. So if the word day occurs more often in the short resumption but not in the long reception. You then have a discrepancy of preference of these function words and the same is true for pronouns. All of the pronouns have a huge disparity between the two texts. For example, the Greek word off 2. Goes up 64 times in the middle reception, but only twice in the short reception. All these uses. Of pronouns, instead of using proper nouns, for example, would show that there is a difference in writing style between the seven letter collection and the three letter collection. Not not that simply, it was redacted to that form. So that's. Why he first picks on function words because. You can try to. Mimic somebody in your writings, but you're not going to be able to hide all of your own personal stylistic effects. Sean Finnegan: Yeah, that certainly is the case. I could also mention. The longer recension which we haven't talked much about here, the Christology seems to be pretty Arian. Having read through the entire longer recession myself. The long I've read. The longer recession of the seven letters, I haven't read all 17 of the longer recession, but in looking at those, it's pretty clear to me. That the language that Ignatius or pseudo Ignatius uses in longer recension. Is eerily familiar to the 4th century battles over, you know begotten before all ages and and things like that that catch phrases and buzzwords that are used later. That kind of indicate to me that Ignatius has been Co opted. By the controversialists of the 4th century. People have to understand. These manuscripts from which we get the translations of Ignatius. They're all late. They're all way later than the 4th century, right? So there's a theological civil war over whether. Or not the. Son of God is eternal, or he's begotten as like the beginning of. God's creative acts, and so both sides are quoting Ignatius. Ignatius is key to the whole battle, and we know for sure his his mates gets get corrupted. We. Just don't know. To what degree? Or if one of the recession survives uncorrupted. That's important to realize for this. Whole thing that that the manuscripts are actually later. We don't have 2nd century or 3rd century manuscripts of Ignatius. Nathan Massie: No. The earliest manuscripts that there are are the Syriac texts and the shortest retention, and. But those are from the 5th century. There's the earth. Yeah. There's the earliest manuscripts. And actually, it's interesting that you bring up the Arian controversy because there's actually, I believe it's a book, or maybe it's a journal article called Ignatius and the Arian. Controversy written by name Paul Gillum. He's a scholar that actually shows a lot of the Aryan type language that's used in the longest reception, and it's actually really useful for us to see that also, in my mind, after reading his article, gives me a little bit less credibility for you Sibelius because as I understand you, Sibelius, he was not very fond of the Trinitarian language would lean towards. Arianism himself, and so if he had copies of the longer receptions of the seven letter collection, he would be happy to vet those as authentic Ignatius because they would be. Riddled with Aria. Sean Finnegan: Well, the thing about you serious. Is that he doesn't. I don't think he actually quotes ignatius's letters. I think he just lists. Them yeah, so. Nathan Massie: That's exactly right. Sean Finnegan: The beauty of Eusebius. 'S church history book is that. He does quote so. Much literature that doesn't even survive and. Nathan Massie: When he when he quotes. Sean Finnegan: He he quotes fairly accurately, unless he's quoting from memory, in which case, like some of his Bible references, get garbled and corrupted a little bit or paraphrase. I should say it's. A nicer way to say it. But like when? He's quoted from ancient sources in general outside the Bible like it's, you know, CBS was a library. In Cesaria, he stewarded origins old library and so he could just unroll a scroll and. Just copy word for word and in the places where books survive, we can check you see these quotes and. We see. Hey, they're pretty good. They're pretty good, but we don't have that for Ignatius. He just mentions the letters and he kind of moves on. So yeah, who knows which version was it? The the longer recession version of the seven. Letters. Or was it the middle reception version or what you know? Nathan Massie: Yeah, exactly. And that that's why keratin actually says that choosing the earliest manuscripts which would have been the the Syriac is the only epistemologically safe bet, because they're the earliest possible sources. And we know for a fact that there are interpolations in the middle of lung receptions. Well, why would you go through and try? To parse out. Called the interpolations when that's not really even a possibility when the earliest possible sources only quote from the three letter collection. Sean Finnegan: All right. Well, let's go back to your point about the Christological comparison between the shoulder and the middle. Nathan Massie: Yeah. So I took a lot of time and kind of with fine tooth comb over the text and part of the issue is like modern versions of Ignatius will have chapter and verse that was actually, I believe, produced by Lightfoot. But the Syriac text that's translated by keratin doesn't. So all of the chapter quotations. Are coming from the middle reception. I was actually pretty shocked. I was willing to go into this realizing that, hey, maybe even the shortest possible versions of Ignatius. Show some type of high Christology but it's not really the case when you strictly compare it to the three letter collection to the. Seven letter collection. For example, in his salutation to the Ephesians and the seven letter collection at the end of the salutation, he says, it's really it's really actually quite long. But he says United and elect through genuine suffering. By the will of the father and of Jesus Christ, our God in the middle reception, if you look. At all the. Quotes apart from the three letter collection, look at the four additional letters. The book is just riddled with calling Jesus Christ our God, our God, our God, Jesus Christ. Over and over again. But every chance that the three letter collection has a chance to do that, it doesn't do it. There's a slight difference in the text of. What it says by? The will of. The father of Jesus Christ our God. So he's saying that it's the father of Jesus Christ that is the one who is our God. It's a very slight change in words, but it shows a difference in the belief from the three letter collection to the solar collection. Each Chapter 7 of Ephesians. It sounds super Catholic. It says that there's only one physician who is both flesh and spirits, born and unborn. God and man, true life and death, born from Mary and from God. First subject to suffering and then beyond it. Jesus Christ our Lord. And so we see this really kind of interesting text in Chapter 7. But the three letter collection, there is no chapter. Seven at all. And so we see this, some of the language that's used almost sounds nicer than it sounds. You know, much later. Sean Finnegan: Well, it sounds Catholic, right? And I've seen this Catholic apologists regularly point to Ignatius of Antioch. Then read out. A quote from him and be like, doesn't that sound just like what the Catholic Church teaches? And you know what? I hear you saying is yes, it does. Which is why it's anachronistic. It's interpolated, it's corrupted, it's not. Oh, Gee, it's not original to the 2nd century. It is. Corrupted by later ways of talking and thinking it is beautiful, but it's just not a a good historical evidence of that belief in the 2nd century. Nathan Massie: And so in in the next chapter in Ephesians 8. It says for our God, Jesus the Christ was conceived by Mary according to God's plan, both from the seed of David. And of the. Holy Spirit, again, a little Catholic and explicitly. Caused Jesus God. In the three letter collection, totally absent from the text that there's nothing in. There at all. Ephesians 19, which is commonly known as the star him, it says when God appeared in human form to bring the newness of eternal life again. Sounds pretty Catholic, doesn't exist in the short recension at all, and that's what we see over and over again, that there are these long elaborates, not just calling Jesus God but calling him. Born and unborn, and from the seed of the spirit and from the seed of David, and these really elaborate texts that simply just don't exist in the three letter collection at all. Sean Finnegan: What would you say is your hypothesis? Then as far as? How we got these three different recessions? Nathan Massie: Even Lightfoot says this in his commentary on Ignatius that. If we would have had the. Syriac text in its entirety. In other words, if it wasn't just three letters but 7 letters, it would have been invaluable because those manuscripts are much near to The Fountainhead. What I see is that the three letter collection is the earliest, not only by way of manuscripts, but by ways of Christology. The three that are collections sounds so much more similar to the New Testament than the middle collection does. So my hypothesis is very similar to that of keratins. That it began with only three letters, 1 to Ephesians, 1 to Romans, and one to polyp. Are those the 1st 3 letters and then as time goes on they continue to add more and more letters to it and and we see this in ancient Jewish writings or ancient writings in general that if you want to write something that is going to be read by people. Even if you're doing it Superfly, you're going to want to be putting somebody's name on it. Who was important. Into the ancient people, Ignatius was important, and that's how you get more and more and more. Letters until you. Go from three letters and probably the early 2nd century to 17 letters by the middle of the Middle Ages from 1500. And so I think that it just naturally got longer and more Catholic and then eventually more Aryan. Over time, and then people in the Middle Ages or the medieval times just wanted to keep writing. And so they did it only in Latin. And they made it more and more interesting by receiving letters from the apostle John or a letter from the mother. Of the Lord Jesus. Sean Finnegan: Yeah, well, that's something to think about. And. And once again, it's important to stress as somebody. That works with. Early Christian authors for many years now. I could tell you this other authors are not like this. Other collections are not like this. You know Justin doesn't have these problems. Justin martyr. Irenaeus doesn't have these problems, you know. Not not. That like for every Christian author it's so easy. OK, there are regularly debates about authorship, you know, take like the Epistle of Barnabas almost everywhere. Maybe everyone, almost everyone would say that's not written by Barnabas, that's written by somebody later who slapped Barnabas's name on it, or who was also named Barnabas. But it's not Paul's Barnabas that he got in a fight with on a missionary trip and then reconciled with it. And it's not. That Barnabas, so everybody calls it pseudo Barnabas, but there's not 3 versions of Barnabas. Nathan Massie: That are shorter and longer. Sean Finnegan: You know there's not 3 versions of the Shepherd of Hermas or of even Papias. Papias is a mess, right? You just have little excerpts from Irenaeus and from Eusebius, and from a couple of sources and and and, you know, it's in the Apostolic Fathers. Like the Holmes edition that you referred to before. But it's like authentic Papias. Like, there's not, like, really a big controversy over, like, oh, well, then later on. Now there are five books of papists instead of just one, and then another 500 years. There's twelve books of this doesn't happen with everyone else. This is. Just Ignatius of. Shock, and I think because it is just Ignatius. Of Antioch, we have to recognize how. Weird it is. And we should grant due suspicion to the surviving documents, especially when you lay out the questionable circumstances that probably almost certainly influence Lightfoot in declaring these seven the seven. Those 7 letters just happened to also endorse his views. Of the New Testament and monarchical episcopate, when it was embattled, you know. So I think that you've brought up a lot of interesting points. What are some conclusions that you could draw from your work on this? Nathan Massie: Yeah, I would say that I have really three conclusions. The 1st is that Lightfoot's monastic redaction theory doesn't really stand well when you examine the data, you don't classically see monks trying to reduce tax, especially if they are much lighter monks like this century. Monks, you're not going to see them taking Jesus and God all the text or you're not going to see them taking references to the resurrection. Out of the text. It just doesn't stand well compared to the more forensic evidence of somebody like Marcus Vincent 2. The middle redemption cannot be trusted as the primary. But Syriac is more likely the shorter letter the three letter collection is more likely to be closer to your original Ignatius, and the reason that I say closer is there are some reasons to believe that there are some interpolations in the three letter text, and I'll give you an example. If you'd like. In the Third Epistle in the Syriac collection, which is Romans, it ends with the really interesting line. It just says for I am far short of the perfection which is worthy of God, be perfectly safe in the patience of Jesus Christ our God. It's the only time the phrase Jesus Christ our God shows up in the short. However, that same line is absent from the longer collections. It doesn't exist in the last line of to the letter to the Romans, and so we either have to say that while the monks were willing to take out every other occurrence of Jesus Christ is our God, they decided to just slap one in at the end. Or I think, which is more likely that the source that the seven letter collection was working on or or going off of. There was actually a split in which the three letter collection was also becoming more interpolated over time, but the earliest. Manuscripts that we have of it are less interpolated than they would have been in the 2nd century, and there are other examples, but I'll just kind of put that one forward. But there are issues with the three letter collection as well. And then lastly the Christology of the three letter collection is much more likely to be from the 2nd. Tree and it's not riddled with the anachronistic language that would have developed over the next three or four centuries in church history. So I think that the. Three letter collection has some problems, but it's probably much more likely to be closer to what Ignatius actually wrote in the beginning of the 2nd century. Sean Finnegan: Very good. I appreciate your work on this and people will be able to watch your presentation once it's released by the. CA what's next for you? Nathan Massie: Well, Lord willing, I will be starting Graduate School in January. I have been accepted to Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. That's its former name. It's now known as Cornerstone University. Where I am pursuing a degree in biblical exegesis of the Greek New Testament, and so hopefully I will be able to begin. That in January. Sean Finnegan: Very good. Well, thanks for talking with me today. Any any final thoughts? Nathan Massie: I just thank you so much for your time and I really enjoyed this. Sean Finnegan: It's been my pleasure. Well, would you think about the episode? I'd love to hear your thoughts at restitutio.org find Episode 522 problematizing Ignatius of Antioch Middle recension and leave your comments there. Also, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, if you'd like to support Nathan to gain his Masters degree, I'm sure he would really appreciate that and and so would I because I I think that this is something that we need to be increasingly doing for each other. Is helping each other as a movement. To get educated to get credentials to get published, to get our message out there, and for whatever reason, that's just the way the world is today. That if you have a credential, you have more credibility. It doesn't always make sense to me, honestly, but that is the world in which we live, so please help out if you can. And once again, the link to Nathan Massey's go fund me is in the show notes for this. Episode well, for those of you who listened to the last episode, the deity of Christ, from a Greco-roman perspective, it was the presentation I gave at this year's Unitarian Christian Alliance Conference, and a number of people commented in on YouTube saying nothing new under the Sun wrote Amen to that. Thank you for presenting this perspective. I hope many will see it, Ellie Mason wrote in Sean. That was really interesting. Thank you. The Nazarene wrote in. I am so glad that you teach this important topic that Yahweh bestows the title Elohim upon specifically elected men because of their roles and responsibilities. I want to make a mention about that comment there. This idea of applying the name of God or the title God to a human being. Is something that we see a number of times in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, and it's something that I wish I could just grab every evangelical and every Catholic and every mainliner and just an Orthodox person and and shake them and say. Look, there is this other. Way of using the word God that doesn't have anything to do with. Nature or sea? Being essence etcetera. It has to do with function has to do with working and standing in as God's agent in a particular situation is something we see very clearly. The clearest example is Psalm 45. Where the King of Israel is called God and yet has a God above him, and there are many other such examples, and this is not a Unitarian idea. Yeah, take a look at any lexicon. Look up the word God in any lexicon, whether Hebrew or Greek. I don't care if you look at the BDB, the harlot, the Bdag players, any of these lexicons, you will see that this usage of the word God is understood by scholars and. Has been for centuries, and yet nobody talks about it. Nobody thinks about it when we see the word God applied to Jesus for like ohh well, he must be of a divine essence, different in person. But Co equal and code. It's like what? Why would we assume that? Why would we bring in later philosophical categories into a 1st century document and say, oh, that's must be what they thought? Come on, that's ridiculous. It's much more likely that Jesus is called God, for example by Thomas, or in Hebrews 18 absolutely crystal clear that he's called God there in the same sense that the Israelite king is called God in Isaiah 45 because Hebrews won eight quotes. Isaiah 45 to say that the author of Hebrews means something different than what the author of Psalm. 45 said is going to require you. To read that in, because guess what, the author of Hebrews doesn't even comment on it. He or she just includes it as a quote and leaves it as it. Is, so it won't. Do to say that it's used in a totally different sense. Someone named Kerry, Weinholtz wrote in saying. The mindsets pity most Christians have a Greco-roman mindset. Both theologically and culturally. Yeah, I think you're right about that, Kerry. That that's really one of the problems I was seeking to expose is that. People, apologists and defenders of the deity of Christ. Today we'll look at the miracles of Jesus and they would say, Oh well, only God can walk on water. Therefore, Jesus must be God, cause Jesus walked on water. Only God can forgive sins. So if Jesus forgave sins and Jesus must be God, only a God can calm a storm or multiply loaves and. Dish. Right. These are all the typical arguments we hear from not just Internet apologists, but local pastors of local churches all the time defending this idea that Jesus is God in the same sense that the father is God, which is really a big claim if you think about it. It's the New Testament. Never comes anyway. We're near it. And So what is this? This is people who have adopted a certain mindset that says if somebody does X, that person must be a God. And that's exactly what the Greco Roman mindset was calibrated to say. And we see this very clearly in my I mentioned the presentation last week, 2 instances in the book of Acts where. Greeks and Romans encountered a miracle and thought the person who performed the miracle. Was a God. Down and this is not at all something we see within the Jewish mindset, the Jewish mindset says no. I see God at work in this person, and so to unwittingly take the position of the pagans over against the Jewish worldview of the New Testament of the. Gospels in particular. And the book of acts. I think is just a huge blunder in Christian theology, and I'd really like to see that change over time. So lots of good thoughts. There from people who are watching the video. Also, I should mention that just a day or two ago, maybe yesterday at ETS Evangelical Theological Society Conference, Dale Tuggy was invited to speak on Unitarianism. He was given a 10 minute slot and a panel of four people to present Unitarianism and opposite him. One of the people at the table was none other than Doctor William Lane Craig, the very famous philosopher and apologist who has debated atheists. All around the world honestly, and has done spectacular work on the resurrection of Jesus. The historicity of the resurrection of Jesus in, in my opinion, he's been featured in the movie a case for Christ. Lots of other little documentaries defending Christianity, and has written prolifically. His his ministry is called reasonable faith. You can look it up if you're interested in it and he's got a lot of other YouTube videos and so forth that he his ministry team has put out some really high quality stuff in fact. But when it comes to the subject of whether or not Jesus is God and how Jesus. This has gone what really came through in that debate and I hope I hope you will have a chance to listen to it. It's on YouTube. You can search for four views on the Trinity and the name Dale Tuggey or William Lane Craig and you'll be able to find it. What really came out there is that William Lane Craig has this burden to find the Trinity in the New Testament and he can't find it. So what he does instead is attacks Dale Tuggey's position and then concludes that the simple quote UN quote simple definition. Then one Tri personal immaterial being is New Testament and and I'm just. I'm sitting here and I'm thinking to myself, what in the world is this word? Try personal like I've I I can tell you I've read all 66 books of the Bible multiple times, multiple translations. I've read the entire New Testament in Greek. I have never seen the word. Try personal. Have you seen it? Let's let's do a search, shall we? Alright. I've got a coordinates up here. We'll just check the ESV. Let's see. Try personal. And what do I get? No results. In fact, it asked me to select a different word that's nearby. You know what words nearby triumph triumphal, triumphant, trivial Trias. Right there is. No tribe personal. Same thing you look. Up the word. Trinity Zero hits you. Look up the word persons. Lots of hits there. Let's see under persons. We got, what, 45 different verses contain that word. But you look through them, none of them is applying this in a Trinitarian sense. Here's an example of. The usage of the word persons now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly. And to earn their own living. That 2nd decimal is 3/12. Acts 2737 we were in all 276 persons in the ship. Guess what? The word person just means a human being all throughout the Bible, whether Old Testament or new. Testament you don't get. This slick understanding of person, as distinct from being or try personality or by personal. Body anywhere in the New Testament, he has to invent that language. He has to import it from the 4th century and let me tell you something. The word person, as distinct from human being, is a later development. It's a later development. How telling is it that William Lane Craig has to use loaded philosophical terminology in order to express what he claims is the simple Trinitarian understanding of the New Testament? To me? It's obviously. And importation of anachronistic language and concepts. More importantly, rather than just simply reading the New Testament clearly, yes, there are a couple of instances where the word God is applied to Jesus, but it is not at all the case that these instances are best explained. Paint by this idea of the son as a person of God. OK, this is this is a later idea and I encourage you to also do research on the word person. Seriously. Like, just look up the word person. Look it up in old dictionaries. Look it up in encyclopedias and you'll see that this is a concept that was developed. At the same time, as the Trinity was developed, why is that? Because they needed an idea that would fit their model, because it didn't exist. Literally the words didn't exist. The Greek words. Behind the word person or the Latin word behind the word person. What we want to talk about hypotheses or persona these words meant other things than the word person in our modern sense. So once again. And it's so important that if you're going to read the New Testament, if going to read the Old Testament, if you going to read the Bible, read it from the world in which those documents were written, read it as their audience would have read it rather than as a 21st century person who's got all these other ideas that were later developed. So it's it's a simple thing, but it's something that I I just feel like I want to bang the table over and over and say especially in light of the recent debate that happened at ETS, where Dale Tuggy really did. Essentially, and not only did he make the case of restorationism, he flat out claimed to be a Restorationist himself. In a room full of scholars, he said, look, I'm a Restorationist. I'm just trying to believe what the New Testament teaches. That's where my theological stake is in the ground and people were confused. They were like, what? What are you? Who's this guy? You know, I thought Unitarians were wacko liberals. They didn't believe in the Bible. And it's like, no, no, no, that's the hype. That's the hype, that's. The the slander. That's the gossip your turns have been around since the beginning. Guess what? Every Jewish person is still Unitarian. They don't use EU word. But they're still Unitarians. All Muslims are Unitarians. Wow. OK. So all Muslims and all Jews are Unitarians. That's interesting. They were Unitarian pagans. You can see Keegan Chandler's work on. Sort of Pagan monotheism, right? That that was something that was around with Constantine prior to his conversion of Christianity. But the earliest Christians too. The earliest Christians are also Unitarians in the New Testament. They're unitarians. They don't have this Trinitarian ideology yet. It's just not there in the 2nd century. We see it as well. We see this idea that the father. Alone is the supreme God, one God overall, people do in the 2nd century, eventually start calling Jesus a God, but it's not at all clear what they mean by. That and it's. Almost certain that they don't mean that he is a. Different person of the same essence as the. Mother. I mean, come on. Where in the world would they get that idea from in the 2nd century? These are things that had to be hammered out slowly. They evolved over time. You needed top rate philosophers like origin of Alexandria and those who came before him. Clement of Alexandria, Philo of Alexandria to develop the mental. Framework to support this kind of an idea that eventually emerges in the 4th century and when it emerges it causes a Christological civil war that lasts 6 decades. Ohh yeah sure. It's in the New Testament. I don't think so. All right, well. I've rambled on enough. Thanks so much for listening. Stay tuned for next week. We're we will have the opportunity to hear from a top rate pH D from the University of Notre Dame on the whole question of adoptionism. So it will be another church. History interview. And then we'll get into some other subjects in the future. I appreciate you all. If you'd like to support restitutio, you can do that at restitutio.org. Rest Studio is a 501C3 nonprofit, and we will be sure to get you an e-mail at the beginning of 2024 with your contributions in there if you use that for your taxes. Thanks everyone. We'll catch you. Next week, and remember the truth. Has nothing to fear.